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Ewing, John

If the entire Mandelbrot set were placed on an ordinary sheet of paper, the tiny sections of boundary we examine would not fill the width of a hydrogen atom. Physicists think about such tiny objects; only mathematicians have microscopes fine enough to actually observe them.

"Can We See the Mandelbrot Set?", The College Mathematics Journal, v. 26, no. 2, March 1995.

Eves, Howard W.

One is hard pressed
to think of
universal customs
that man has
successfully
established on
earth. There is one,
however, of which he
can boast: the
universal adoption
of the Hindu-Arabic
numerals to record
numbers. In this we
perhaps have man's
unique worldwide
victory of an idea.

Eves, Howard W.

Mathematics may be likened to a large rock whose interior composition we wish to examine. The older mathematicians appear as persevering stone cutters slowly attempting to demolish the rock from the outside with hammer and chisel. The later mathematicians resemble expert miners who seek vulnerable veins, drill into these strategic places, and then blast the rock apart with well placed internal charges.

In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.

Eves, Howard W.

An expert problem solver must be endowed with two incompatible qualities, a restless imagination and a patient pertinacity.

In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.

Eves, Howard W.

A formal manipulator in mathematics often experiences the discomforting feeling that his pencil surpasses him in intelligence.

In Mathematical Circles, Boston: Prindle, Weber and Schmidt, 1969.

Everett, Edward (1794-1865)

In the pure mathematics we contemplate absolute truths which existed in the divine mind before the morning stars sang together, and which will continue to exist there when the last of their radiant host shall have fallen from heaven.

Quoted by E.T. Bell in The Queen of the Sciences, Baltimore, 1931.

Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)

[Upon losing the use
of his right
eye:]Now I
will have less
distraction.

Euler, Leonhard (1707-1783)

Mathematicians have tried in vain to this day to discover some order in the sequence of prime numbers, and we have reason to believe that it is a mystery into which the human mind will never penetrate.

In G. Simmons Calculus Gems, New York: McGraw Hill Inc., 1992.

Euler, Leonhard (1707 - 1783)

If a nonnegative quantity was so small that it is smaller than any given one, then it certainly could not be anything but zero. To those who ask what the infinitely small quantity in mathematics is, we answer that it is actually zero. Hence there are not so many mysteries hidden in this concept as they are usually believed to be. These supposed mysteries have rendered the calculus of the infinitely small quite suspect to many people. Those doubts that remain we shall thoroughly remove in the following pages, where we shall explain this calculus.